Recently, I joined The Reeder’s Devin Reed and DemandJen’s Jen Allen-Knuth for a no-fluff webinar on a pressing reality for B2B revenue teams: AI search is changing how buyers discover, trust, and choose vendors. The new LLM-first environment continues to challenge traditional go-to-market (GTM) motions.
As Vice President of Brand Marketing at G2, and a B2B marketer navigating this same shift, I know how tempting it is to tack “AI” onto your pitch and expect results. But buyers are getting smarter. Their search behavior is changing, their trust signals are shifting, and they’re asking harder questions.
Here are my top takeaways for SaaS marketing and sales leaders trying to survive and thrive in this new era.
1. Your funnel isn’t broken; it’s irrelevant
Buyers aren’t starting with Google anymore. G2’s 2025 Software Buyer Behavior Report found that nearly 80% of software buyers now start their research with tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. That number is likely even higher today.
“Your traffic isn’t disappearing. It’s just moving. Visibility is more important than ever.”
Devin Reed,
Founder, The Reeder
That means your traditional search engine optimization (SEO) and gated-content playbooks are basically wearing Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak — and not for good.
2. The bar for trust has never been higher
There’s a difference between showing off your AI features and proving they solve a real problem. Buyers can sense hype from a mile away. When every cold email name-drops “AI,” it becomes white noise.
“If we don’t start with the problem, and we don’t have alignment on what problem we’re solving, no AI solution is going to be successful.”
Jen Allen-Knuth
Founder, DemandJen
That creates a trust gap. Buyers don’t need another feature list. They need to believe you understand what’s broken before you start selling the fix.
3. Excitement isn’t the same as buy-in
Enthusiastic champions are great until they hit a wall of internal resistance. One person’s excitement doesn’t always reflect the organization’s readiness. This is even more true in the case of enterprise businesses.
“There’s a lot of excitement about AI. But it might give a false impression of the organization’s actual excitement.”
Jen Allen-Knuth
Founder, DemandJen
Smart sellers are shifting from “let’s ride the hype” to “let’s anticipate the pushback.” If you don’t identify skeptics early, deals will stall later.
You’re not just selling AI. You’re helping buyers manage internal consensus and risk.
4. The AI council is your new buyer persona
More companies are forming internal AI Councils. These are cross-functional teams shaping how AI is adopted, governed, and purchased. They aren’t just IT gatekeepers; they’re like Jedis influencing software buying decisions.
“If you want to build trust at a company you’re selling to, good is knowing the AI council’s direction. Great is influencing it.”
Devin Reed
Founder, The Reeder
B2B SaaS buyers now ask: “How are you building this?”, “Is it secure?”, and “Who’s in charge of AI at your company?”
5. AI governance will lose or close the deal
Even if your product is enterprise-ready, the buyer’s internal AI governance may not be. That gap between interest and internal readiness builds friction, which can wipe out deals.
At G2, we’ve been really focused on making sure we’re not just using AI for the sake of it but actually tying it to tangible value: time savings, better content quality, and faster workflows for sales. But even when the value is clear, the deal can stall if the legal, compliance, or data privacy teams aren’t aligned internally.
More stakeholders means more complexity and more trust that needs to be built.
6. Brand trust now includes AI trust
Buyers aren’t just asking what your AI can do. They want to know how it was built, who owns it, how secure it is, and whether it reflects responsible innovation. These questions weren’t in the request for proposal (RFP) last year.
“There’s been a big shift in the questions buyers are asking. They’re not just asking, “What can your AI do?” They want to know how you’re building trust with it.”
Devin Reed,
Founder, The Reeder
At G2, some of the best-performing content we’ve seen is where we’re really transparent about how we use AI, even if it’s still early. Buyers don’t expect perfection, but they do expect clarity.
7. Don’t sell to the 5%; build for the 95%
Only 5% of your total addressable market (TAM) is actively shopping. That means most buyers aren’t in your funnel, yet. But they’re still forming opinions. In Slack communities. In group chats. In ChatGPT sessions.
“Everything is brand. Every time you have a touch point with your market, it is your brand.”
Devin Reed,
Founder, The Reeder
7 things B2B marketers and sales teams can act on today
- Audit your brand’s visibility across large language models (LLM). If you’re only showing up in one model’s results, you’re invisible in the others. And buyers are comparing.
- Train your teams to lead with the problem and connect AI to tangible business value. If it doesn’t map to return-on-investment (ROI), it doesn’t matter.
- Coach your sales team to slow down and map the friction. Prompt your champions with: “Who might be most resistant to changing how you’ve always solved this problem?”
- Treat AI councils as a new stakeholder group. Arm your sales and marketing teams with messaging that speaks to governance, risk, and cross-functional priorities, not just user benefits.
- Equip your teams with questions like, “What’s your AI council’s current charter?”, “Who approves new AI tools?”, and “Which use cases are considered low-risk?”
- Own your AI narrative. Publish your principles, disclose limitations, and train sales to speak fluently, not defensively, about your AI stack.
- Invest in discoverability. Make sure your brand shows up in LLM search, trusted communities, and peer review sites like G2, not just your own website.
Trust is the bridge between the buyer’s future and your funnel’s past
If you take one thing away from this conversation, let it be this: AI didn’t just reshape your product roadmap. It reshaped your buyer and recalibrated their expectations.
The brands that win in this new world won’t be the ones with the flashiest features or biggest budgets. They’ll be the ones that meet buyers where they are — with clarity, credibility, and curiosity.
If you missed the webinar, don’t worry — full session recordings and additional resources are available here. If you want to discuss these insights further, connect with me on LinkedIn. Let’s keep the conversation going!
by Tanushree Verma
